China's polyethylene industry through the continuous development in recent years, as of 2011, the annual capacity of the device reached 10.82 million tons. During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, there are still Fushun Petrochemical, Wuhan Ethylene, Sichuan Refining, Daqing Petrochemical and other devices put into production, by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period, polyethylene production capacity will reach 16.67 million tons. From the data of 2011, polyethylene national production in 10.152 million tons, apparent demand in 17.2727 million tons, from which it can be seen that the domestic polyethylene there are still more than 7 million tons of shortages have to rely on imports. Therefore, imported products occupy an important proportion of China's polyethylene market by virtue of their relatively high performance and cost advantages. But with the expansion of domestic production capacity and the diversification of olefin raw materials during the 12th Five-Year Plan, China's self-sufficiency rate of polyethylene will be greatly improved, and the degree of foreign dependence will be gradually reduced.
Demand, as the main consumer of polyethylene plastic film, as it is mostly used in the terminal consumption and transportation links, the growth of its demand and the development of the overall economic situation in the country has a greater relationship with the basic to maintain a slightly higher than the growth of the domestic GDP, its growth momentum is stable, there is a rigidity of demand. From the flexible packaging film production statistics, since 2006, an average of 13% rate of increase, also confirmed the steady growth of plastic film. Another important consumption field of polyethylene is plastic pipe, and its output is also increasing with the implementation of the accelerated pace of urbanization and the increase in municipal pipeline construction projects in China. In the next few years, urban water supply and drainage, gas pipelines, as well as urban underground electric power, communication sheathing pipelines and other municipal plastic pipes will continue to be the focus of development in recent years. Polyethylene industry in the steady development process, the industry itself should not be underestimated. China is "less oil, gas and coal" countries, but naphtha olefin is the traditional main production method of olefin products in China, which is bound to cause China's polyethylene there are raw materials and cost pressures, and in the case of high oil prices, cracking device start-up will be limited. Secondly, China's petrochemical companies have limited R & D capabilities, the product is mostly concentrated in the level of general-purpose materials, while the performance of high-end specialty materials is insufficient, this aspect has to rely on imports. Furthermore, the current petrochemical companies mostly use pricing or first listed deferred settlement sales strategy, for the deferred settlement mode due to the cost is not locked, so that traders can not play their own flexibility, have to follow the petrochemical guide price to determine the selling price. In addition, production capacity and industrial distribution is uneven, mainly in North China, East China and South China, of course, this is related to the development of China's regional economy, but also associated with the convenience of transportation, but the uncoordinated development of the three regions of the market is too saturated, and is not in line with the country's efforts to promote the development of the central and western regions of the strategy.
At the same time, the downstream plastic products factory is also facing a lot of problems, such as the industry's many small and medium-sized enterprises, the overall level of equipment is low, backward production processes, product structure is unreasonable, insufficient investment in science and technology, innovation is not strong, low degree of product intensification, the industry's regional development is not balanced, the market disordered competition, the ability to withstand the risk of being weak, etc.. In addition to the above problems of the enterprise itself, the development of small and medium-sized enterprises are also facing financing difficulties, rising labor costs, raw material prices rose too quickly and other more prominent problems. Production and management difficulties, the external environment for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises need to be improved.
The Twelfth Five-Year Plan proposes diversification of olefin raw materials, the development of coal olefin and shale gas development plan. Although this has a significant role in changing China's energy structure, but a careful analysis of the traditional position of naphtha-based olefin still can not be changed.
China's renewable polyethylene industry originated in the 1980s, after two decades of development, in 2009, the whole industry gradually entered a period of stable development, but with the turmoil of the market economy, the level of profitability declined, the industry's development is facing a great deal of hardship, subject to a variety of constraints:
1, the constraints of raw materials. China's domestic waste recycling rate is still at a low level, and recycling are to walk home to home, the quality of the source and the supply are not stable. As a large consumer of plastic products, China's dependence on imported polyethylene waste plastics remains at more than 30%, so the industry is still facing constraints on the supply of raw materials, the urgent need to formalize the recycling system.
2, the constraints of technology. Polyethylene waste plastic sorting costs account for one-third of the treatment and processing costs, the vast majority of practitioners for the rural surplus labor force, the professional level needs to be improved. At the same time, due to technical constraints, the quality of recycled polyethylene particles is difficult to ensure that the primary, low-grade products still account for a large proportion of the application areas are limited, especially the space occupation of high-end products is narrow.
3, poor clustering. Due to industrial concentration is not high, resulting in sewage treatment and other related equipment system is not sound, policy regulation is difficult to force, the industry shows disorderly development.
4, policy constraints. China's recycled plastics industry lacks to encourage the development of the industry's perfect tax management and supporting policies. Although as an important industry of the circular economy, but the fact that the recycled polyethylene industry to some extent in the policy failure and market failure of the middle ground, not supported. On the contrary, it has become the target of environmental protection crackdown, and certain policies and actual production are actually trending away from each other.
5, cognitive concept of poor. Social awareness of the environmental concept of renewable plastics is not high, the media public opinion on the development of renewable polyethylene industry bias, the development of the industry fuzzy. This year's Lianyungang "foreign garbage" incident, Chenghai toy incident, the media have taken a sweeping approach to this. Coal to olefin refers to the technology of synthesizing methanol from coal as raw material and then making olefin from methanol. The huge demand for olefins, the price advantage of coal and the scarcity of oil resources, so that the coal-to-olefin project is very competitive market, is to realize China's coal instead of oil energy strategy, to ensure national energy security is one of the important ways. It is understood that in the next few years there are nearly 20 sets of coal olefin project plans to build, but the coal chemical industry is resource-intensive, technology-intensive, capital-intensive large-scale industry, the device must be built in the raw material origin and the amount of water resources is very large, the technology is still immature. At the same time during the Twelfth Five-Year National Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction target of 17% decline in 2010, and coal-based olefin from mining coal to production of environmental pollution are quite serious, and the national access thresholds have been gradually increased, the energy tax reform also demonstrated that the petrochemical industry industry, industrial upgrading and transformation of the urgency of the situation. From a comprehensive point of view, whether coal-to-olefin can bring impact on the development of the polyethylene industry and substitution, all need to be further considered to observe.
March 2012, the Ministry of Land and Resources in the "shale gas Twelfth Five-Year Plan" announced that China's shale gas recoverable resources of 25 trillion cubic meters, although slightly less than the data released by the EIA, but China's shale gas reserves are still the world's first. China's shale gas resources, technical basis and commercialization conditions are better, once the policy is in place, China in the United States after learning from the experience of shale gas development, combined with the country's resources and all aspects of the conditions, the development of Chinese characteristics of the shale gas industry, is expected to become a new point of industrial growth.
Shale gas has a very low permeability, with a recovery rate of 10-20 percent, making it technically demanding to develop. The Ministry of Land and Resources requires a good job of resource evaluation, to find out the resource base of shale gas in China; secondly, to increase scientific research efforts, to form shale gas exploration and development technology suitable for China's geological conditions, and to realize the independent production and manufacturing of major shale gas equipment; thirdly, to formulate the shale gas industry policy, to clarify the thresholds and standards of access to the industry, and to form the pattern of shale gas development in an orderly and competitive manner; and fourthly, to increase the support of policies to promote the rapid development of the shale gas industry. The government should also increase policy support to promote the rapid development of the shale gas industry. In the planning to clarify the division of labor between departments, the formation of work synergy, so that the planning objectives and tasks to be implemented. Improvement of living standards makes people's packaging materials, functional and diversified requirements, such as fresh film, gas barrier film, light barrier film, selective permeability film, antimicrobial film and printing film, etc., the future of PE for the film industry applications will be more refined.
While China's arable land area has been decreasing over the years, the 1.8 billion mu red line is insurmountable. With the development of agricultural science and technology, the demand for high-end agricultural film is gradually increasing, high-performance, thin, multi-functional agricultural film demand is growing faster. However, agricultural film manufacturers are small, geographically dispersed, high-grade production enterprises are fewer. Later the standardization of the agricultural film market is imminent, the future production of agricultural film will be developed in the direction of centralization, the development of high-end production and application of agricultural film will also put forward new requirements for PE technology innovation.
Pipe is mainly used for infrastructure construction. From the PE pipe enterprise status quo, the industry enterprises generally have the same products, slow development of new products, raw materials are mainly dependent on imports of the problem. Enterprises need to further increase R & D efforts, market segmentation, and expand the application areas, the only way to reach a higher level in the application of products, so as to obtain more revenue. Although the overall pipe industry has some problems, but China's 12th Five-Year Plan for accelerating rural transformation, rural urbanization, low-cost housing, affordable housing construction and other requirements will be to a certain extent to enhance the market demand for raw materials for the pipe, the late pipe materials market outlook is still bright.
The development of the cable industry and China's industrial economic development, especially the development of the information industry is closely related. With the accelerated construction of the power grid, especially the construction of ultra-high voltage project into the construction, the demand for wire and cable materials will increase; secondly, China's consumer electronics and microelectronics industry will continue to develop rapidly; again, China's 3G industry in the rise, and the broadband network construction will be accelerated, the development of the cable industry has a bright future.